That Morning On The Colorado High Meadow

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The high meadow was not as formless
as you'd think.
The foxglove, bluebell,
were plucked like metaphors,
pasted into lines to describe
the feelings they engendered.
And the wind didn't just
blow where it was blowing.
It was crude but committed,
shunting a hundred bees,
shuffling grasses,
puffing pollen from
the palms of air,
fluttering and flattering the lupine petals,
trying not to be too abstract
but resisting total concrete stillness.
The abandoned cabin anchored
the fragile morning light,
swallows nesting in its rotting eaves,
vines creeping through its windows,
ghosts and crows and mist
sniffing at the dregs
of human habitation.
And the river,
while under orders from gravity,
could still flow at the rate,
in the direction it did,
for other reasons.
It was violin strings
with the sun as its bow.
It was a gliding whale
with a belly full of fish.
It was the wide-eyed lens
endlessly taking the willows' picture
at liquid shutter speed.